Listings are descriptions of the products and services available in your marketplace. Listing types are a Sharetribe feature that lets you configure how listings should work for customers and for providers.
In this tutorial, we'll set up just one listing type that lets providers offer their bikes for daily rentals, and customers make bookings through the provider's availability calendar. Follow along with the changes the tutorial makes or adjust listing types based on your own needs.
Default listing type
Go to Listings > Listing types from the navigation in the left sidebar in Console.
You'll have at least one default listing type, created based on the answers you gave in the setup wizard when creating your Sharetribe account.
If you feel your listing type suits your marketplace better than the option in this step of the tutorial, you are encouraged to keep it as is. However, you can still follow through this tutorial to better understand the listing type functionality.
Listing type name
The listing type name is important because it allows you to distinguish your listing type from the other listing types in a marketplace. It's also a descriptor for you. Let's put something descriptive.
Type "Daily booking".
Listing type ID
The listing type ID is a unique identifier that is stored in each listing's "extended date" using this listing type. It can't contain spaces, and there are other character restrictions, too. In general, you should not change the ID of an existing listing type that has listings created with it, as those listings will retain the old ID. We don't have any bike listings yet, so we can proceed to change the ID.
Type "daily-booking".
Transaction process
The transaction process determines the flow of the transaction initiated from a listing with this listing type. There are currently three options: Calendar booking, Purchase, and Free messaging. Biketribe uses calendar bookings, which is what we would want.
Keep "Calendar booking".
If you're building a marketplace for selling products, choose "Purchase" here. If you do not want or cannot have any online payments, choose "Free messaging".
Booking unit
Next, we need to determine how the calendar and booking experience works. Options are daily, nightly, and hourly bookings. We want daytime bookings, so we'll choose "Daily".
Choose "Daily".
Click "Save changes".
Default listing fields
The transaction process we chose ("Calendar booking") determines what information will be asked from providers when they create their listings and how this information will be used during discovery and transactions by customers.
Our marketplace is location-based, so we want to keep Location. This field asks providers to input where their bike is located so that it is returned when customers search for a nearby location.
Payout details should be required before publishing. As a result, our providers will be asked to add their bank and personal information when creating their first listing so that they can receive payouts from the marketplace.
Keep "Location" enabled.
Keep "Payout details required before publishing" enabled.
Next: Add custom listing fields and filters
Now that we've defined the listing type, let's continue refining how our listings work by adding custom listing fields for providers to fill when creating their listings. We will also create filters out of these fields to help customers find the listing on the search page.
Go to the next tutorial step to learn how to add custom listing fields and filters.